Your Personal (Solar) Power Plant

Posted by Macie Melendez on May 04, 2012

Gen110, an energy distribution company, has installed solar on 2,000 homes in less than 3 years.

Simply put, Gen110, a California-based energy distribution company, sells electricity. “We give people an alternative to local utilities,” says Jason Brown, CEO of Gen110 who is proud to have recently opened up a tenth Gen110 office in the Bay Area’s East Bay.

Not only are the company’s offices growing, but so is its number of customers as they’ve now installed what they refer to as “personal power plants” (or solar panels) on the roofs of over 2,000 homes in California in less than 3 years since their founding.

“We produce electricity and the homeowner isn’t subject to the costs of transporting electricity, which they pay for through their utility. As a result, we help homeowners pay cheaper prices,” he says. In order to do so, Gen110 partners with any and all local solar partners (SunRun is one in particular) to find the solar installation that makes financial sense for each home individually. “We’re agnostic to technology. We put together the best combo of partners to provide the homeowner with the biggest payoff,” says Brown.

The company’s success thus far is based on the business model in which they don’t work with homeowners that they can’t help. “We don’t provide electricity where the people won’t benefit from this,” says Brown. “They need to qualify.”

By qualify, he is referring to a number of requirements that the home and the occupants need to meet. They are:

The home’s roof must have sun exposure

The home’s occupants must be high energy/electricity users

They must be paying a high premium for their energy

Within these requirements, about one in every ten homes qualifies. Luckily for Gen110 and its qualifiers, only one in ten homes has still proven to be a successful business endeavor that manages to put renewable energy at the forefront.

But as Brown says, the company’s agnostic approach to technology doesn’t necessarily mean they’re sticking with solar for the long haul. “We believe that eventually every single home will have their power sourced on site and not at a power plant. Right now, solar is the best option but we’ll soon have a small fuel cell that produces electricity on site. It’ll be like when all homeowners didn’t have microwaves, and now they are in every home in America.”

For now, though, Gen110 is on a mission to spread the word and inform homeowners that there are other options for generating electricity. “The future is bright. We just have to get out there and educate people,” Brown says. Both literally and figuratively, bright is exactly what Gen110 hopes for.

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